Things We Know by Heart (6 page)

 

Each heartbeat begins with a single electrical impulse, or “spark.” The distinctive sound we hear through a stethoscope, or when we place our head on a loved one's chest, is the sound of the heart valves opening and closing in perfect synchronicity with each other. It is a two-part rhythm—a delicate dance of systole and diastole, which propels the heart's electrically charged particles through its chambers roughly every second of the day, every day of our lives.

I PULL UP
alongside the curb behind Colton, and before I can put my car in park, he's out of his and heading in my direction. I turn off the ignition and step out into the salty air, where the low sound of water crashing over rocks drifts up from below the bluff we're on.

“It's a perfect day,” Colton says, looking out over the water. “Wanna check it out?”

“Sure,” I say. I don't really know what we're checking out, but I'm more than happy to find out. We walk across a grassy area where a solitary old man sits on a bench reading his paper while his little dog sniffs around the ground
beneath him, and when we come to the thick rope at the edge of the bluff, I get a real look at the water and rocks below.

Unlike the other day there is no fog hugging the cliffs, not a hint of a cloud in the sapphire sky that stretches huge and wide. It's the kind of day that begs you not to waste it. I feel a tiny hitch in my chest at the thought, because it makes me think of Trent. He never wasted a single second. For him it was like a clock started the moment his feet hit the ground each day. I can remember being with him and wishing that just once he'd slow down. Be still. But it wasn't in his nature to be that way, and it doesn't seem to be in Colton's either.

His fingers drum on the post in front of us, and I can feel him standing next to me, feel the nervous energy that belongs to both of us. I try to think of something, anything, to fill the quiet, but it just keeps stretching. Instead I look out over the glassy surface that surges around the enormous rocks rising out of the water. They're scattered in clusters just offshore and have always looked more like mini-islands to me than rocks. A group of territorial-looking pelicans covers the entire top of the rock closest to shore, with one taking off or landing every few seconds. My eyes travel down the craggy face of it toward the water, where it's been smoothed out by the constant surge of the waves, and I watch the water rise against the rock and then recede.

Colton clears his throat, kicks at a pebble on the ground. “So . . . can I ask you a question?”

I swallow hard. Clear my throat. “Okay,” I say slowly.

He takes a sip from the water bottle in his hand and looks out over it all again, long enough to make me nervous. I think of a hundred different apologies/reasons/explanations for whatever he's about to ask me.

“You don't like questions very much, do you?” he asks, turning to me with a look that makes me fidget with my hands.

“No, questions are fine. What kind of question is that?” God, I sound as nervous as I feel.

“Never mind,” Colton says, “it doesn't matter.” He gives me a quick smile. “It's not a big deal, just a day. So what if we relax and enjoy it? Have one really good day?”

I flash on one of Shelby's blog posts. An Emerson quote she put up that she said reminded her of Colton and his attitude, and how he treated life after his surgery:

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he know that every day is Doomsday.”

I remember reading it and thinking how he and I had both learned this truth, that any day could be the end. But we'd chosen to do different things with it. He put it into practice as soon as he could. Got back to the things he loved doing—the life he'd had before. I did the opposite. For so
long. But standing here with him right now feels like a chance to try things his way.

“Okay,” I say finally. “One really good day.”

“Good. Glad that's settled.” A wide, happy grin breaks over his face, and he turns abruptly and walks back toward his bus. I watch as he goes, and notice something I somehow missed before. A bright-yellow double kayak strapped to the racks on top.

A vague fear materializes in a corner of my mind as he reaches up to the strap at the front of the kayak. He undoes it quickly, moves to the back one, and lowers the kayak onto the pavement with a heavy plastic
thunk
. I glance behind me at the rocks and the swirling water down below, which doesn't seem quite so peaceful all of a sudden. When I look back at Colton, he slides the back door open and pulls out two paddles, which he sets carefully on top of the kayak. I stay where I am, in denial of all the pieces adding up right in front of me.
We're not actually, he's not thinking we're going to, I've never—

“You ever kayak out here before?” he calls.

The man on the bench glances up, mildly interested, then goes back to his paper when he realizes the question wasn't meant for him. I cross the grass quickly, trying to think if there's a way out of this. I'm all for the beach and admiring the rocks, but kayaking through them is miles beyond my comfort zone. And it doesn't seem like something he should
be doing either, with everything—it seems risky.

“Have you?” he asks with a smile. Then, without waiting for an answer, he reaches inside, pulls out a life jacket, and hands it to me.

I shake my head. “No . . . and I don't . . . I've actually never kayaked
anywhere
before, so I don't think . . . This doesn't seem like a good place to start. You know, for a beginner. All those rocks . . .” Now, in my mind, they're all jagged edges and crashing waves.

“It's actually a great place,” he says. “Pretty protected. We do a lot of tours down here.” He pauses with a smile. “It's where I learned.”

“Really?” It comes out sounding like maybe I don't believe him, but I do. And I realize I want to know more—about him, and who he is. In his own words, not Shelby's. I can see it on his face that this is a big part of it.

“Yeah,” he says. “When I was six, my mom finally let my dad take me out here with him.”
Eight years before you got sick,
I fill in.
Eight years before it all started, and you went to the doctor because your mom thought you had the flu.
I feel guilty for knowing a part of his life that he doesn't realize I do, but that's not what he's thinking about right now. I try not to either. I try to be here, now, with this Colton instead of the sick one I feel like I know so well.

He shakes his head, laughs at the memory. “I'd begged my mom to let me for so long, and then when she said yes,
we got here and I looked over the cliff, and I got the same exact look you did a second ago.” He pauses. “I tried every excuse to get out of it, but my dad just slapped a life jacket on me, gave me the paddles to carry, and hauled the kayak down the stairs without saying anything. When we got to the bottom, he put me in the seat, and then he kneeled down in front of me and said, ‘You trust your old man, right?' and I was so scared I just nodded. Then he said, ‘Good. Do what I tell you, when I tell you, and the worst thing that'll happen is you'll fall in love.”

I laugh nervously, try to look anywhere but at him, but it doesn't work.

Colton pauses, smiles at me with those eyes, and then looks out over the water. “With the ocean, is what he meant, that I'd take after him and want to be in it all the time, one way or another.” He looks back at me. “He was right. Couldn't keep me on the shore after that day.”

I know this is a version of the truth, and it's the one he's letting me know. But I also know about the years when he was sick, times that did keep him on the shore, and in and out of the doctors' offices and the hospital. Part of me wishes I could ask him about it, but the other part doesn't want to think of him that way.

“I don't really have anything like that,” I say.
Anymore,
I finish in my head. I see a flash of dirt road, Trent's shoes, the two of us matching step for step, breath for breath, and
guilt twists in me. “My sister and I used to run together, but she's been gone at school, so I don't really do it without her.” It's the version of the truth I can let him know.

“That's too bad,” Colton says. He looks like he's about to ask a question again but thinks better of it. “It's been a long time since I've been out here, but there's this cool place my dad showed me that I've been wanting to see again. It's a little tricky to get to, but worth it. You wanna try?”

I don't answer for a moment. Taking a kayak into the ocean truly scares me, but I trust him in a way that's so easy, it's almost scarier. I look away quickly, out over the edge of the bluff, down to the water swirling over the rocks, which is exactly what my stomach feels like.

“Okay. Let's try it.” I don't sound very convincing.

Colton works to keep a straight face, but a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “You sure?”

I nod.

“You seem scared. Don't be scared. Just do what I tell you, when I tell you, and you'll be fine.” He pauses and lets the smile creep slowly over his face, and though he doesn't say anything else, I can feel the rest of his dad's words swirl around in the breeze that picks up between us right then.

Colton grabs more gear out of his bus, and before I have a chance to answer, or change my mind or think things through, I've got the lifejacket on over my bathing suit, Colton is wearing a rash guard with his trunks, and we're
lugging the kayak down the cement stairs to the pebbly beach. We're both a little out of breath as he pulls it to the waterline and gestures for me to sit in the front seat. I do, and he hands me a paddle. “You ready?”

“Right now? Don't I need a lesson or something first?”

Colton looks entertained. “This
is
the lesson. It's easiest to show you in the water. It's pretty small, so just get in and I'll paddle us out there. Then I'll show you. Sound good?” He smiles down at me, and I muster all the confidence I can to answer.

“Yep,” I manage, but my heart pounds out steady worry in my chest as a wave breaks over the rocks in front of us, rolling them up the beach with a low
shush. This is actually happening.

“Here we go!” Colton's voice says from behind me. The kayak surges forward, then rocks hard as he jumps in, knocking me off-balance for a moment. But in the next moment his weight steadies us, and I feel his paddle dig into the water on one side and then the other, and we're moving forward. I tense as a wave rolls toward us, standing up taller as it gets closer, like it's going to break before we can make it over; but Colton digs his paddle in harder, and we pass over it easily, the kayak climbing up the front of the wave and sliding down the back. Colton digs in one more time on each side and then we glide, smooth and steady over the surface of the water. Finally, I exhale.

“That wasn't as scary as you thought it was gonna be, was it?” he says from behind me.

I turn around as best I can in the stiff life jacket, surprised, and proud when I answer, “It wasn't at all.”

“Little victories,” he says.

I watch him a moment longer, watch him lean back in the seat and take a deep breath like he's drinking in the morning, as if doing that is a little victory in itself; and I suppose it is. It makes me feel like I do know him right then. Like in those two words is a glimpse of the kind of person he is.

“I love that,” I say. “Little victories.”

“They're the ones that count. Like being out here today, right now.”

His words hang there between us in the bright sunlight, and I can see he means them. When his eyes sweep over the sky and the water and the rocks, and then come back to mine and rest there, green and calm, I want to tell him I know the truth. That I know why he can see things that way. I want to tell him who I am and what I was doing in the café the other day. The words all start to push their way to the surface, rising like stray air bubbles through the water.

“We're drifting,” Colton says. The bubbles dissipate, and my words float away, unspoken, on the current.

He smiles and lifts the paddle from his lap, pulling me
back to the moment. “Time to learn. You ready?”

I nod, still twisted around.

“All right. You're gonna hold on to the paddle here and here, where these grips are,” he says, demonstrating.

“Okay.” Thankful for something else to focus on, I face forward, grab my own paddle that's been balancing on my legs, wrap my hands around the grips, and hold it straight out in front of me. “Like this?”

Colton laughs. “Perfect. Now turn back around for a sec so I can show you how to do it.”

I do, and he digs his paddle into the water on one side in a strong and steady stroke that sends us gliding gently over the inky-smooth surface. Then he brings that side out and does the same with the opposite end of the paddle. “It's like you're making circles with your hands, the way you do with your feet when you pedal a bike. Try it.”

He rests his paddle on his legs, and I nod and turn around to try it. The first stroke I take is too shallow, and my paddle just skips over the surface of the water. We don't budge. I feel my cheeks redden.

“Try again. Dig it in deeper.”

I concentrate on using my arms to push the paddle down through the water like Colton did and am astonished when we actually sail forward a few feet.

“There you go,” Colton says.

Encouraged by him and the fact that we actually moved,
I bring the first end back in deep, feeling the resistance of the water as my paddle pushes through it. I think of the circles, like pedals on a bike the way he said, and I keep going, and after a few good strokes we're cutting through the glassy surface at a decent clip. I laugh, happy and proud that I'm the one powering this little boat.